I KNEW I was back in Britain when I saw a news story which stated that Brussels sprout growers were demanding an apology from a travel agent firm which had, they said, cast a slur on the humble sprout in one of its holiday ads.

Said sprout growers were, said the story, seeing red (shouldn't it have been green?) because Thomas Cook ads were showing a bowl of sprouts above a caption 'it's time to get away'. Disgruntled growers took this as a deadly insult to their nearest and dearest.

Sprouts are, of course, a British institution. Strangely enough they are not a Belgian institution, although they still eat them and they were developed there and first recorded in 1213, or so one of my garden history books tells me. We didn't catch on to the vegetable until late in the 19th century and even now the sprout is a European phenomenon, you hardly see them in America and they are not thought to be of any particular value to the gourmet in other countries. You don't, after all, see sprout curry, or stir fried sprouts, or even spaghetti con sprouts.

Most Europeans like them, although the French turn their noses up a bit, perhaps believing they are too British, like spotted dick, to take any account of.

The Dutch have, so my daughter tells me, developed a sprout which is always sweet and nutty, and never turns bitter, as some are inclined too.

God help me, I'm becoming a sprout bore.

Our old dog used to love sprouts and would watch beseechingly as they were strained, her eyes following every little round green ball as it tipped into the colander. Unfortunately sprouts had a rather alarming effect on her digestive system - suffice to say that if she had more than one or two there were few flies left alive in the kitchen by the morning.

Humans either love or hate sprouts, there's no in between, and most adults who loathe them have been, I've discovered, forced by an overbearing parent to eat them as children. I've never really understood this kind of behaviour.

No, I don't like wasting food, but everyone has different tastes and if your child indicates it doesn't like something them the simple solution is not to cook it for them. But no, you find people with horrid childhood memories of being bullied into swallowing great grey hunks of liver or yellow cabbage or slimey bits of fat.

My daughters once went to a school where the headmaster wouldn't allow any child to refuse anything at lunch and they then had to eat everything.

He was totally adamant about this and the only get-out was to produce a doctor's certificate saying your child couldn't eat a certain food. As he knew the likelihood of anyone going to a GP for this purpose was nil, he was onto a winner.

However tempting it was to fetch him a sharp one with my handbag I gave in and my children, who were not fussy but didn't like everything, took a packed lunch like almost everyone else.

My son-in-law hates sprouts for the same reason, force feeding at boarding school. I do occasionally torment him by making up sprout recipes for whole dinners. Sprout pate with pureed sprout confit; sprout a la orange with sauteed sprouts and sprouts roasted with Pernod and to follow a delicious sprout mousse with a sprout, raspberry and pistachio nut coulis. Only metaphorically speaking of course, but he's not entirely sure. But enough of sprouts you say. And rightly so, however delicious.

I enjoyed a foreign Christmas, it snowed on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, otherwise it was dry, bright and very cold.

Highlights included walking around the tiny cobbled streets of one little town where every ten yards there was a tree decorated with red bows. From almost every doorway came the sound of the Red Flag being played, except it wasn't of course, the tune is also an Austrian carol, but it was rather like being at the Labour party conference for the whole holiday.

German supermarkets, unlike the rest of the country, are not terribly well organised and the check-out assistants have certainly not been trained in the American 'have a nice day' manner. In fact their faces bear a distinct 'have an even worse day than I'm having' expression. It's nothing to do with not liking foreigners, because they neither look at your or greet you and everyone gets the same shade of indifference.

The one who served us on the Saturday had trouble getting the antiquated till to accept the card and while she was waiting for a supervisor to appear (for some reason they don't have handy little bells to ring, nor a light to indicate which till it is; they have to shout for attention and it's a long time coming). While she was waiting she produced a large baguette filled with ham and cheese from a shelf under the till, plus a bottle of orange drink, and proceeded to have her lunch, dripping crumbs all over the keyboard which was perhaps why it wasn't working to perfection. Not the kind of behaviour which would go down too well in our own dear Somerfield store.

My only job for the holiday was to make-up a gingerbread house kit for my granddaughter, a job I was only too happy to do until I noticed that my daughter had neglected to tell me that the instructions were in German. I'm not awfully good at making things from kits, as a quick look at any MFI bookcase in the house will tell you. But a kit with 25 syllable words indicating that Eine pointy bit mit der blau code goes on der square bit mit der hausenfrausen totally defeated me.

It didn't, of course, defeat my grandson who pointedly removed the dilapidated prefab I had constructed, took it to pieces, merely glanced at the instructions and then turned it into a two storey luxury dormer bungalow. Which saved Hansel and bloody Gretel from a draughty night but did nothing for my ego.

I had travelled with a friend who also has a family in the area and on the way back we suspected our luggage was a teeny bit overweight. It was by a lot, and we got a severe telling off by a stern German check-in lady who then beamed and told us she was giving us an extra Christmas gift to match the weighty ones we were obviously lugging back home and not charging us anything.

Back home it took us almost as long to get out of Plymouth Airport's car park than it had to fly from Gatwick.

Firstly, the change machine doesn't recognise the new £10 notes. Secondly, the staff didn't have any change so we had to go to the security office.

Thirdly the man there watched my friend put down one £10 note and then count out 16 one pound coins before telling her he wasn't allowed to accept cash. As by then we were cold, tired and in need of a duty free ciggie, it was lucky she didn't fetch him a sharp one with her handbag.

A Happy New Year to you all.